Wednesday, December 2, 2009

I trekked up to Birmingham for the Good Food Show last week, and spent the morning navigating the hungry hordes before having a delicious three course VIP lunch with the Miele crowd. After a quick meet and greet with the Hairy Bikers, we were whisked off for a cookery experience with Mark Lloyd, head chef at The Cleave Inn. What Miele had neglected to tell us was that the "experience" would be on stage in front of a live audience! We put on our best smiles and headed for the stage.

The lady from Miele gives a helping hand to Rejina and me

We cooked a delicious venision toad (or should that be bambi?) in the hole,with chilli onion jam and steamed broccoli. It was a great opportunity to try out the Miele kit and razor sharp Kin knives. We then sat down to lunch number two. Gastrogeek and I began to wish we hadn't tucked in quite so greedily to dessert earlier...

The finished product

If you want to try one of Miele's cookery experiences for yourself, they have very generously donated two tickets to the Blaggers' Banquet auction, so get over there and get bidding!

Finally, we were treated to one of Gordon Ramsay's performances in the Supertheatre, full of the usual bravado and a rather tasty looking butterscotch & apple dessert made by Mark Sargeant. This time two years ago I was telling you about Tearamisu inspired by Gordon at the GFS.

Then it was just a last round of the show stalls before making the drive home. Best buy of the day was Sheep Dip whisky from The Spencerfield Spirit Company. I was originally tempted to the stand by their Pig's Nose whisky, but was persuaded by the lovely Alex Nichol that my hubby would probably prefer Sheep Dip, given his taste for the peatier end of the scale. The name comes from the sheep dip barrels that farmers used to hide their moonshine whisky in.

All in all, a great day out, although do try to go on a weekday as even on a Thursday the ravenous crowds were heaving!